Today brings us the latest data on the UK economy or to be more specific the economic growth or Gross Domestic Product number for the second quarter of this year. If you are thinking that this is later than usual you are correct. The system changed this summer such that we now get monthly updates as well as quarterly ones. So a month ago we were told this.

The monthly GDP growth rate was flat in March, followed by a growth of 0.2% in April. Overall GDP growth was 0.3% in May.

So we knew the position for April and May earlier than normal (~17 days) but missing from that was June. We get the data for June today which completes the second quarter. As it happens extra attention has been attracted by the fact that the UK economy has appeared to be picking-up extra momentum. The monthly GDP numbers showed a rising trend but since then other data has suggested an improved picture too. For example the monetary trends seem to have stabilised a bit after falls and the Markit PMI business survey told us this.

UK #PMI points to a 0.4% rise in Q2 #GDP tomorrow, but that still makes the Bank of England’s recent rate rise look odd, even with the supposed reduced speed limit for the economy. Prior to the GFC, 56.5 was the all-sector PMI ‘trigger’ for rate hikes. July 2018 PMI was just 53.8 ( @WilliamsonChris _

As you can see they are a bit bemused by the behaviour of the Bank of England as well. If we look ahead then the next issue to face is the weaker level of the UK Pound £ against the US Dollar as we have dipped below US $1.28 today. This time it is dollar strength which has done this as the Euro has gone below 1.15 (1.145) but from the point of view of inflation prospects this does not matter as many commodities are priced in US Dollars. I do not expect the impact to be as strong as last time as some prices did not fall but via the impact of higher inflation on real wages this will be a brake on the UK economy as we head forwards.

Looking Ahead

Yesterday evening the Guardian published this.

Interest rates will stay low for 20 years, says Bank of England expert

Retail and wholesale trade were the largest contributors to growth, at 0.11 percentage points and 0.05 percentage points respectively. Computer programming had a growth of 1.9%, contributing 0.05 percentage points to headline gross domestic product (GDP).

There was also some much better news from the construction sector and even some rebalancing towards it.

Growth of 0.9% in construction also contributed positively to GDP growth.

Although of course these numbers have been in disarray demonstrated by the fact that the latest set of “improvements” are replacing the “improvements” of a couple of years or so ago. Perhaps they have switched a business from the services sector to construction again ( sorry that;s now 3 improvements).So Definitely Maybe. Anyway I can tell you that there are now 40 cranes between Battersea Dogs Home and Vauxhall replacing the 25 when I first counted them.

Today’s sort of humour for the weekend comes from the area to which according to Baron King of Lothbury we have been rebalancing towards.

However, contraction of 0.8% in the production industries contributed negatively to headline GDP growth…….

Manufacturing fell by 0.9% although there is more to this as I will come to in a moment.

Monthly GDP

You might have assumed that the June number would be a good one but in fact it was not.

GDP increased by 0.1% in June 2018

If we look into the detail we see that contrary to expectations there was no services growth at all in June. Such growth as there was come from the other sectors and construction had a good month increasing by 1.4%. I did say I would look at manufacturing again and it increased by 0.4% in June which follows a 0.6% increase in May. So we have an apparent pick-up in the monthly data as the quarterly ones show that it is in a recession with two drops in a row. Thus it looks as if the dog days of earlier this year may be over,

This leaves us with the problem of recording zero services growth in June. The sectors responsible for pulling the number lower are shown below.

The decline of the retail trade whilst the football world cup was on seems odd. Also there overall number completely contradicts the PMI survey for June which at 55.1 was strong. So only time will tell except Bank of England Governor Mark Carney may need its barman to mix his Martini early today as he mulls the possibility that he has just raised interest-rates into a service-sector slow down.

One consistent strong point in the numbers in recent times has carried on at least.

There was also a rise in motion pictures, increasing by 5.8% and contributing 0.05 percentage points.

So we should all do our best to be nice to any luvvies we come across.

Comment

We should welcome the improved quarterly numbers as GDP growth of 0.4% is double that of both France and Italy and is double the previous quarter. However whilst the monthly numbers do provide some extra insight into manufacturing as the recessionary quarterly data looks like a dip which is already recovering the services numbers are odd. I fear that one of my warnings about monthly GDP numbers are coming true as it seems inconsistent with other numbers to say we picked up well in May but slowed down in June. If we look at the services sector alone and go back to February 2017 we are told this happened in the subsequent months, -0.1%,0.3%-0.1%,0.3% which I think speaks for itself.

We also got an update on the trade figures which have a good and a bad component so here is the good.

The total UK trade deficit (goods and services) narrowed £6.2 billion to £25.0 billion in the 12 months to June 2018. The improvement was driven by both exports of goods and services increasing by more than their respective imports.

Next the bad.

The total UK trade deficit widened £4.7 billion to £8.6 billion in the three months to June 2018, due mainly to falling goods exports and rising goods imports.

If you want a one word summary of out recorded trade position then it is simply deficit. Although currently we are looking rather like France in terms of patterns as a reminder that some trends are more than domestic.